In W.H. Auden's poem, "As I Walked Out One Evening" what does "love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart" mean?

W. H. Auden's poem, "As I Walked Out One Evening," deals with
the naiveté of youth and its rosy-hued world colored by love, and the contradiction present in
the passing of time that robs us all of love, youth, innocence, and ultimately,
life.

The message of one lover to the other describes an endless
dedication and love. The images are gentle, romantic and perhaps even
familiar.

I'll love
you, dear, I'll love you

Till China and Africa
meet,

And the river jumps over the
mountain

And the salmon sing in the
street...

However, the element of Time
is introduced—personified as something that does not stop. More constant and
more insidiously destructive than anything else is the passing of time, which no one or thing can
escape.

But all the
clocks in the city

Began to whirr and
chime:

'O let not Time deceive you,

You
cannot conquer Time.

The speaker seems
to caution that we not lose sight of things left undone that have their own importance,
especially (perhaps) once the opportunity to pursue it is past. This stanza almost has the sound
of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." The glacier and the desert may represent
great adventures open to the young who may still withstand the ice and heat. Missed opportunities
also carry us to the end of our time.

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The glacier knocks in the
cupboard,

The desert sighs in the
bed,

And the crack in the tea-cup
opens

A lane to the land of the
dead.

The stanza near the poem's end
that you ask about describes someone standing at the kitchen window, crying, perhaps over missed
opportunities, or the knowledge of the inevitability of death. The final two lines of the stanza
refer to loving others who are bent or twisted—or dishonest—just as our own hearts
are.

O stand, stand at
the window

As the tears scald and
start;

You shall love your crooked
neighbour

With your crooked
heart.

Where love allows us to see the
world as a perfect place, the speaker reminds us that the world is anything but. "Crooked"
probably means "bent," "twisted" or "askew." In this case, it would seem that the speaker tells
the reader that we are all "emotionally deformed" in some way; but even so, perhaps we still need
to love others as best as we are able.

The last stanza drives home
the point that lovers go and the clocks stop chiming, but the silence is beguiling: in the long
run, it all leads to one end: death.